Consider the possibility

Dr. Sandra Steingraber imagines an Illinois that stops poisoning its people with cancer-causing chemicals.

Did you find your jeans, Sandy?” Feet are scurrying about upstairs. A faint
“Yes” floats down the stairwell. Kay Steingraber tells me to have a seat; on the
kitchen table I note the remnants of a breakfast interrupted by my early
arrival. Through the kitchen window, I spot Steingraber’s grandson,
raking leaves. Kay’s daughter, the scurrying Sandy, is Dr.
Sandra Steingraber, one of the country’s foremost experts on the
environmental links to cancer and reproductive health. Dr. Steingraber has invited me to accompany her from
Pekin, where she’s staying with her mother, to Rockford, the site of
her next speaking engagement. Elijah, her 6-year-old, joined her on this
trip; 9-year-old daughter Faith is at home, in Ithaca, N.Y., with her
father. How odd it is to see this woman — whose book Living Downstream has
been optioned for a documentary, who has appeared on network-news programs,
who has briefed United Nations delegates on the dioxin contamination of
breast milk, and who has testified before the European Parliament on the
impact of toxic chemicals on children — in such a domestic setting. And, at the same time, it’s not odd at all. Unlike so many other scientists, Steingraber strives,
as an author and lecturer, to personalize the impersonal statistics linking
health and environmental contamination. “In the field of environmental health,”
she says, “there is a human life behind every data point. There is a story to be
told.” Often the story is her own. Yet, she also seems
heroic in her fight against “toxic trespass,” in her promotion
of the “precautionary principle,” and in the unending
assistance she provides to those who can gain strength from her knowledge
— especially in her native state. Steingraber is strongly committed to central
Illinois, on which her 1997 book Living
Downstream centers. The night before,
Steingraber spoke on behalf of Peoria Families Against Toxic Waste, which
is waging a battle against the expansion of a local hazardous-waste
landfill by the Peoria Disposal Co. It is one of only 16 landfills in 13
states that accept such waste — some of which arrives from 12 other
states — and it happens to be located over an aquifer that provides
much of the area’s drinking water. This was the second visit in two years by
Steingraber, whose job it has become to bolster, with additional
information and media attention, this grassroots organization and its
allies, which include the Heart of Illinois Sierra Club and the medical
staff of all three Peoria hospitals.Speaking from the pulpit of Peoria’s Unitarian
Universalist Church, the willowy Steingraber seemed too slight of build,
too soft of voice, to lend weight to the argument against expansion. But
beyond this delicacy lies a formidable knowledge that has garnered her
positions on President Bill Clinton’s National Action Plan on Breast
Cancer and, more recently, the California Breast Cancer Research Program.
She is at heart a scientist, and at age 48 she has under her belt a Ph.D.
in biology from the University of Michigan, a fellowship from Harvard, and
a fetal toxicology study that she conducted at Cornell University. Steingraber tells her Peoria audience that
legislation meant to keep us safe, the Toxic Substances Control Act, was
groundbreaking and globally important when it went into effect in 1976. The
law, however, also grandfathered in all chemicals that were in commerce
before 1979 — all 62,000 of them — and it cannot keep up with
new scientific discoveries. The law, she says, is based on the paradigm
that “the dose makes the poison.” “The notion that there is a safe threshold
level for toxic chemicals — the level at which harm is negligible
— has really carried through many periods of history and undergirds
our entire regulatory system, even now,” she says, “so that
when a chemical is discovered to be inherently toxic through careful
laboratory bench study — because it is a neurological poison,
carcinogen, a mutagen, maybe it’s linked to infertility, it disrupts
the immune system — the way we respond to that discovery is not to
immediately search for a nontoxic substitute, but instead we go to work in
the lab to try to determine what the maximum exposure will be before the
harm is less than negligible.” Our bodies, she says, are being exposed to mixtures of chemicals, but
testing is conducted on chemicals on an individual basis. “We know
from biomonitoring studies that between 400 and 500 toxic chemicals exist
in human tissues. When we take a look at umbilical-cord blood,” she
says, “we find 287 different chemicals.” Steingraber lists
particular chemicals that are reaching our children even before birth
— pesticides, stain removers, wood preservatives, heavy metals,
industrial lubricants, combustion byproducts, flame retardants — all
of which have been found in cord blood. Steingraber tells the Peoria crowd, which at
intervals murmurs and shifts in muted astonishment, that “safe”
thresholds do not take into consideration the genetic variability that we
now know exists. Certain segments of our population are more vulnerable to
toxins than the rest of us because of the genetic hand they have been
dealt. The threshold limits set by scientists also fail to take into
account the special vulnerability of infants, children, adolescents, and
pregnant women. In other words, she says, timing also makes the dose. A system based on risk assessment cannot be
responsive to new findings such as these, Steingraber says. You cannot go
back and dig up old waste when science makes a new discovery, as was the
case, she points out, when new data showed a link between cadmium and
prostate cancer, “and at lower levels than we ever thought
possible.” Because of these shortcomings, she says, the 27 nations of
the European Union have scrapped the risk-assessment process in favor of
the precautionary principle, which uses inherent toxicity as a trigger for
action. Therefore, the potential for a chemical to cause harm is sufficient for it to be
removed from circulation.

PHOTO BY THOMAS HANDY

The European Union has not only banned heavy metals
from its landfills — heavy metals account for much of the waste in
the Peoria Disposal Co. landfill — it is also banning them from
electronics, effectively stopping the contamination at its source. PFATW and the medical community believe, on the basis
of an increased incidence of cancer reported by St. Francis Medical Center
and the increased blood lead levels in Peoria’s children as reported
by the head of the Peoria Medical Society, that the toxic-waste landfill is
tied to medical problems. If there are suspicions and indications that this
may be true, the precautionary principle would tell you that you cannot
wait for absolute
proof when human health is at stake. But, as Steingraber writes in Living Downstream: “Our
current methods of regulation, by contrast, appear governed by what some
frustrated policymakers have called the dead body approach: wait until
damage is proven before action is taken. It is a system tantamount to
running an uncontrolled experiment using human subjects.” Toward the end of the evening, Steingraber reads a
personal e-mail from her mentor Dr. Joseph Guth, a biochemist, attorney,
and senior policy analyst for the Center for Environmental Health:
“Where does all the waste that our economy and the global economy
continues to generate going to go? To the land of the politically
powerless, which includes the Third World and the First World and those who
are disenfranchised and those who are asleep. If the good people of Peoria
want to stay asleep, everyone else’s waste is coming right at
them.” As she reads Guth’s message, her voice is
gentle, like a mother soothing a child who is injured or who is facing a
doctor’s appointment or a hospital stay: Yes, it hurts, but together we can fix it, and we’ll be OK.
Despite her disconcerting message, Steingraber gets a
standing ovation. As we drive Interstate
39 toward Rockford, I ask Steingraber about the source of her bravery. How
could she, 20 years ago, travel to war-torn areas of Africa to study the
environmental effects of war on the Blue Nile River? How can she continue
to confront issues that make most of us feel helpless?It was not destiny, she tells me. At times, she says,
she has stumbled through life’s decisions as the rest of us do, and,
like the rest of us, she has been affected by events beyond her control
— her mother’s breast cancer, her own battle with bladder
cancer while only in her twenties. I notice that she speaks of her mistakes
and misgivings as easily as she speaks of the science she has intensively
studied, and she in turn listens intently. I already know from Steingraber’s lectures,
from the way she responds to people, that she does not hold herself above
anyone. Perhaps it is this — her respect for the scientific and
nonscientific worlds alike, her willingness to expose her own tribulations
— as much as her incredible background, that allows her audience to
believe that they, too, can do their part, with their own abilities and
talents, to pave the way for a less toxic future. During the three-hour drive our conversation jumps
often between urgent issues and everyday happenings. As we approach
Rockford, it takes another giant leap from remembrances of our youth
(Steingraber remembers with regret slowing her pace as she walked to school
so as not to arrive with the boy with “cooties”) to the
enormity and longevity of cleanups at Superfund sites, one of which is
being dealt with in Rockford. Before environmental laws were established in the
1970s, many industries disposed of their waste in the most convenient way
possible, which often meant dumping them on the ground or into the closest
body of water. The most highly contaminated and dangerous sites eventually
came to be covered by the Comprehensive Environmental Response,
Compensation, and Liability Act, more commonly known as Superfund, in 1980.
This act allowed for immediate response to threats to human health and
massive remediation efforts. Such was the case at the Rockford site. Contamination
of soil and an underlying aquifer resulting from the disposal of hazardous
waste at the Southeast Rockford Groundwater Contamination site —
including chlorinated solvents, waste oils and fuels, paint sludge, and
hospital wastes — was thought to have occurred mainly in the late
1950s and early ’60s, although it was not discovered until the late
’80s, prompted by a citizen complaint. In 1991, the EPA moved 283
residents from wells to a municipal water supply. An additional 264 homes
had received municipal water service by late 1992. In Living Downstream Steingraber writes briefly about the Rockford site,
and she now mentions its connection to an advance in the understanding of
human epidemiology. It was a study conducted here, she says, that revealed
that when one is dealing with a chemical that evaporates easily, the
greatest exposure, surprisingly, comes from breathing the air, not drinking
the water. This study, which was initiated in 1989 by the Illinois
Department of Public Health, made the contamination in Rockford
“famous in toxicology circles.” Four source areas of contamination have been
identified at the Southeast Rockford Groundwater Contamination site, and
cleanup work began in 2005 with a limited removal of contaminated soil at
one of the four sources. According to the Illinois EPA, additional work at
this area is expected to commence in 2008, and it is hoped that the agency
can start to address a second source area as well. It has been nearly 20
years since the discovery of this site. Millions of dollars have already
been spent, and millions more will be needed. The perils of playing
legislative catch-up, of believing that the future holds answers to
problems involving waste, are excruciatingly apparent at Superfund sites.Steingraber has an
amazing ability to reduce scientific findings of great intricacy to elegant
terms and stories. In Peoria she took us through human development from
conception to old age, highlighting our vulnerabilities to chemicals at
each phase of life. At Rockford College, Steingraber again escorts her
audience on a complex journey, telling the story of an “environmental
detective” following lines of evidence to logical conclusions. She
leads the audience through the vast and tangled data potentially linking
“the No. 1 pesticide used in the United States,” atrazine, to
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The first clue: the cancer-registry data, which show
that the incidence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma has tripled over the
last half-century. Furthermore, Steingraber says, there are no changes in
genetics or bad habits to explain the increase. The maps that graphically
indicate zones of incidence show clusters in regions with high use of
herbicides. The next line of evidence, she says, comes when you
ask whether certain professions have shown an increase in the incidence of
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma more rapid than that in the general
population. You will learn that the disease is more common in farmers,
Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange, and golf-course superintendents.
And what does the animal data show? It shows that dogs, too, get
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Steingraber, at a recent event sponsored by the Land Connection

PHOTO BY DANNY NEWMAN

Then Steingraber asks what the scientific community
knows about the actual genetic fingerprint of pesticides in patients with
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She tells us that research shows a rare
mutation in which “a chunk of DNA actually breaks off, flips upside
down, and then reattaches itself.” When a search for this mutation
was made in the general population, she reports, it was found “in
high frequency among those who are farmers or those who are pesticide
applicators.” The evidence — with the cancer-registry data, the
maps, the occupational literature, the animal data all pointing to the same
suspect — is incriminating; nevertheless, it’s still considered
partial evidence.
“And the question is, when does the weight of
the evidence become sufficient that we decide as a society that we’re
paying too high a price for this kind of weed control? When will we decide
to do something different?” she asks. We have, in fact, had the will
and the courage once before, she tells us — in 1964. This is when the
U.S. surgeon general warned us, “on the basis of animal studies and a
few correlative studies,” that smoking caused lung cancer. The definitive proof that
smoking causes lung cancer — the exact gene and the exact mutation
— was not discovered until 1996. “But we didn’t need to know that
mechanism before we warned people about smoking and lung cancer,” she
says. “I’ve been protected from what we now recognize as a
known carcinogen, secondhand tobacco smoke, my whole life because my
parents had the courage to act on good but partial evidence — and I
think we can likewise find the courage to exercise good judgment in the
face of good but partial evidence and to embrace the precautionary
principle, which dictates that people should not remain in harm’s way
while the wheels of scientific proof-making slowly grind on. It’s the
kind of courage that requires imagination.” Imagine, she says, an Illinois with falling cancer
rates and an economy that is no longer dependent on the production and use
of cancer-causing chemicals. “Two hundred years ago abolitionists
were called unrealistic when they dared to envision a U.S. economy not
dependent on slave labor — and I think if we can divorce our economy
from slave labor we can certainly divorce it from chemical carcinogens. We
can become chemical abolitionists,” she declares.After her lecture in Rockford, Steingraber talks to every person who has lined up
to speak to her. When we return to our hotel, she asks me whether I would
like to take a look at the materials that inform her lectures. I cannot
pass up the chance to look through her personal file. She sends me back to
my room with a bulging folder. I scan, as closely as my tired eyes will allow,
science reports, policy reports, a Government Accountability Office report
called “Options Exist to Improve EPA’s Ability to Assess Health
Risks and Manage Its Chemical Review Program,” and personal e-mail
correspondence from experts, some of whose names I recognize. Sandra
Steingraber does not, apparently, pull information from thin air. Her folder includes a 2006 article from The Lancet, one of the oldest
peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, titled “Developmental
Neurotoxicity of Industrial Chemicals.” The report contends, “A
few industrial chemicals are recognized causes of neurodevelopmental
disorders and subclinical brain dysfunction.” It continues: “Of
the thousands of chemicals used in commerce, fewer than half have been
subjected to even token laboratory testing for toxicity. Nearly 3,000 of
these substances are produced in quantities of almost 500,000 kg
[kilograms] every year, but for nearly half these high-volume chemicals no
basic toxicity data are publicly available, and 80 percent have no
information about developmental or paediatric toxicity. . . . In the
U.S.A., a legal mandate to require testing was established in the Toxic
Substances Control Act, but is largely unenforced.” Her folder also includes a copy of Mark
Schapiro’s “Toxic Inaction,” published in the October
2007 edition of Harper’s, which examines how Europeans “recently decided to
do something about all the untested chemicals that are ending up in their
blood” through the recently enacted Registration, Evaluation, and
Authorisation of Chemicals legislation. Schapiro quotes a European Union
official who states: “The assumption among Americans is, ‘If
it’s on the market, it’s okay.’ That fantasy is gone in
Europe.”When writing about the
universal use of DDT in the seminal book Silent
Spring, Rachel Carson, to whom Steingraber is
often compared, notedthat “in most minds the product takes on the harmless
aspect of the familiar.” But given what I have learned on this road
trip, I wonder as we drive home whether it is, rather, the harmless aspect
of the unfamiliar.
If we have never heard about it, then how bad can it be? Many people in Peoria were unaware of the toxic
nature of the nearby landfill. In fact, in a strange twist, a recent
editorial by the Peoria Journal Star seems to present this fact as a reason not to oppose the landfill expansion:
“Many folks who were not even aware of the landfill’s
existence are vehemently opposed to it now, including an uncommon coalition
of local doctors who cite its potential health risks.” In addition,
the Web site of Peoria Families Against Toxic Waste advises, under a
section called “What Can You Do?” that people e-mail, phone,
and talk to friends and neighbors because “many people in Peoria
County are still not aware this hazardous waste landfill exists.”In Rockford, Steingraber asked people what they know
about the Superfund site in their community. No one she asked has heard of
it, despite the fact it has been nearly 20 years since the contamination
was discovered; despite the fact that, according to the U.S. EPA’s
Superfund Web site, “all four areas continue to pose a potential
threat of further contaminant release.”We decide to take the back roads home, and
Steingraber comments on the loveliness of the landscape. This sentiment,
which tends to elude most native Illinoisans, reminds me of the opening
chapter in Living Downstream. In it she speaks to imagined first-time visitors to
Illinois farm country: “But Illinois is not flat at all, I would
insist, as I unfold geological survey maps that make visible the
surprisingly contoured lay of the land. Parallel arcs of scalloped moraines
slant across the state, each ridge representing the retreating edge of a
glacier as it melted back into Lake Michigan and surrendered the tons of
granulated rock and sand it had churned into itself.” For Sandra Steingraber, nothing is too familiar or
unfamiliar about her much-loved Illinois as she peels back the layers to
reveal both its allure and peril.Springfield writer Jeanne Townsend Handy’s
story on bicycling, “Pedal power,” was published in the Aug. 30
edition of Illinois Times. Bound for Springfield in JulyDr. Sandra Steingraber will be in Springfield in July
2008 to speak at the ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrating the opening of the
Southern Illinois University School of Medicine’s SimmonsCooper
Cancer Institute. Steingraber had been an “insightful,
thought-provoking” keynote speaker at the February 2001 installment
of the medical school’s annual cancer symposium, “when the
Cancer Institute was just a gleam in the eye of faculty at SIU,” says
Ann Hamilton, director of continuing medical education. “It seemed
that she would be the perfect speaker to bring us full circle.”Steingraber says she hopes to work with the
SimmonsCooper Cancer Institute to develop a rapid-response team that would
proactively conduct environmental investigations in ZIP code areas in
Illinois with higher-than-normal rates of cancer. Illinois is the ideal state, she says, for this kind
of active investigation, given its “gold standard” cancer
registry, its numerous toxic sites, and its pesticide contamination in
rural areas. “One can investigate, in Illinois, the role of
both industrial and agricultural chemicals on cancer rates,” she
says. Steingraber also plans to call for active
investigation into clusters of children’s cancers in Illinois,
“as there is troubling evidence from the lab bench and from human
data linking pesticide exposure to pediatric brain and blood
cancers.”She adds that the evidence is so compelling that many
Canadian cities and provinces have outlawed the cosmetic use of pesticides.
“It’s time for Illinois to stop taking a
‘See no evil, hear no evil’ approach to environmental
health,” she says. — Jeanne Townsend Handy